The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1887-05-13
COOKING AND TEMPERANCE.
How the Kitchen May outdo the
Rumshop.
New York Trlbune.1


In the Tribune recently appeared an inter-
esting account of what is being done in this
city to teach the great art of cooking to the
daughters of poor people. This work is real
ly one of the most benefcent conceivable
1t produces more solid good in more di-
rect way than any other form of philanthropy
Silly people are apt to fancy that there is
something undignifed, ignoble, paltry, about
cooking. In point of fact the art is the indis
pensable foundation to all forms of civiliza-
ton, and ignorance of it is at the bottom of
half the worst evils that afllict modern soci-
ETY.. The condition of the poor in so called
civilized countries is for the most part
wretched, chiefly because the masses know
nothing of the proper methods of preparing
food, or of the selection of it. They as a
rule waste their food fund in extravaganza
and inJudiclOus purchases, and then they
spoil half they buy through their culinary
incapacity. Out of these spelled meals; out
out of the disgust which such barbarous cook
ing breedssGrlses the craving for drink
whjeh9flves thousands and tens of thous-
-ands to the saloon for comfort and compen-
sation.
1t may confidently be asserted that not ten
per cent of the men who drink do SO
solely because they relish liquor. When
such a positive love for drink exists it is
generally symptom of disease. Men are
led to drink or driven to it by external con-
dltlons most often, and nothing is more con-
duciye to this end than the miserable dieting
which is the common lot Of the poor. The
man who knows that he has q wholesome.
savory meal awaiting him at home is not
likely to linger at the saloon. The life which
grows up about the latter place is not nat
ural one. The customers of the bar seek the
place as an alternative quite as often as be-
cause they like it,. They are fugitives from
discomfort trsm bad and repulsive food,
from dirt and evil smells not seldom from
the foul moods bred in their womenkind by
misery. and rum and beer Women are driv-
ed to drink by the hOpelessness of making
homes for their husbands and children.
Their Ignorance of cooking and housekeeping
thwarts all their efforts, and they attribute
the squalor in which they vegetate to their
poverty, and fall back on the saloon as a
source of forgetfulness.
Teach them or their daughters to cook, and
at once light is let in on their darkened lives.
They then hold a talisman which will bring
their husbands from the rum shop and keep
them at home, which is more. They can then
establish something like family CIRCLE and
the nucleus fixed, new means of extending
the wholesome influence will develop of
themselves. The whole character of the
average workman can be improved, elevated,
sweetened by this one instrumentality. 1t
is no doubt possible to diet a man out of an
archism even. Your natural anarchist is a
dyspeptlc. He is SOured by malnutrtion,
Feed him back into good health and vigor-
GUS digestion and he will laugh at the gloomy
and truculent ideas which had possession of
him. Good cooking can be made to count
for a great deal in the solution of difficult
social problems, and particularly in the
settlement of the drink question If all the
temperance organizations would add cook
ing school attachment to their working APP
paratus they would find conversions from
drink not only easier and more numerous,
FnNff ar.aI,
cook and an immense deaf of friction will be
eliminated from modern life. Temperance
and wholesome food are natural allies and
partners, and bad food is the greatest incent-
i've to drink that can be named. BY all
means, therefore, let the cooking schools be
heartily annrOvad and eunnortad